In order for the web design industry to stay relevant and inspiring, it undergoes changes every year. The changes allow for greater flexibility when designing interfaces and interactions.
As a matter of fact, the needs of your users nowadays have become an intrinsic component in design. Users want a website that is interactive, relevant and personal. Anything short of this will only amount to frustration. Therefore, as a designer you need to stay updated on new trends to reap the benefits of great user experience.
2017 is not entirely a new year. Rather, we are in the second half of it. This means we have a pack of awesome design trends prepared for you.
Below are 10 amazing web design trends of the year 2017. Some are not exactly new, rather they have morphed through time.
Let’s start.
Cinemagraphs
If you are new in web design, you must be wondering what cinemagraphs are. Well, cinemagraphs are GIFS and videos which run on a smooth loop. They add movement and visual interest to pages that would be anything if not static.
They have become popular nowadays and have a stunning visual effect when properly used. However, high quality cinemagraphs can result in files of large sizes. In such a scenario you might want to consider streaming a video instead.
If you want to view examples of some amazing cinemagraphs, visit flixel, a hosting service for such.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
Are you tired of traditional image formats resizing horribly and slowing down your page?
If this is the case, you need to try scalable vector graphics. Unlike traditional formats, SVGs are not raster and pixel based. Rather, they use vectors.
What are vectors? Vectors are a mathematical description of an image. This means, the image rendered is of high quality and the appearance never degrades even after resizing. This simply means, they are resolution independent.
Secondly, SVGs don’t require any HTTP request. Cool, right?
And lastly, you can animate them.
Use of Constraint Based Design Tools
This is a trend that isn’t new to designers, but has been in use for its touch on responsive design.
Traditionally, one had to rebuild same screen over and over for different devices. This would not be idealistic for today’s fast growing industry.
Hence the use of tools that make use of constraints to lessen the amount of repeated work when building for the available array of devices. These tools lay their focus on spatial relationships between elements and try to retain them as composite elements even when resized.
Figma is one such tool. Check it out if you haven’t been using it. Less work is a win for designers, don’t you think?
Bold, Creative Typography
This is now a thing for many companies. They are adapting to big, bold and creative typography to make their homepages stand out.
2016 saw some use of creative typography and the trend has been successfully employed in the year 2017. Until recently, the internet had been dominated by neo-grotesque styles such as Roboto, Open Sans and Helvetica. This was kinda boring if you ask me!
Designers are now using different types of typefaces boldly to achieve that stylish and classy look.
Animations and GIFs
Animations and GIFs have literally taken over the internet. They are used to better explain workflow and draw users’ attention.
With the ample availability of visual tools to help you engage amazing animations, this trend will be around for a long time.
Just don’t overuse them. As much they are used to reinforce the tone of content, they can also inspire migraines if overused.
Material Design
In the last few years, material design has really grown in popularity. Numerous material designed themes and templates have been created for CMSs and front-end frameworks.
Developed by Google, Material Design creates a hierarchy of meaning and importance on a page. This draws the user’s attention on different areas while at the same time responding to their actions. Lest I forget, material design uses geometric shapes to create depth and realism and to visually enhance your site.
Therefore, it is evident why its use has been prominent in 2017.
Responsive Design
Responsive design is a trend that is definitely not going away. User requirement for designs that are responsive to their devices has become mandatory.
To stress on this, in 2016, Google changed its ranking algorithm to prioritize websites with responsive content.
So, what we have seen so far in 2017 is the next generation of responsive design i.e. use of CSS media queries.
Asymmetric Layout
This is a trend that morphed into shape last year (2016). Designers broke the rule of symmetric designs.
Unlike symmetric designs, asymmetric designs don’t create mirror images (like the Vue.js homepage). They are balanced but not perfectly similar halves. The fact that most content doesn’t furnish a perfect symmetry creates a platform for the use of asymmetric design.
Minimalistic Web Design
Well, minimalism has been taken to an entirely new level in 2017. Instead of users encountering a homepage, they are now being presented with a card.
Cards act as entry points that act as an entryway to more information. Assorted cards can be used to visually suggest a topic within a website, and coax users to click.
Open Composition
This has to be one of the most popular trends in 2017.
Until recently, the design world was overshadowed by compositions which were static, symmetric and closed. Of late, designers are straying from this style.
Open composition are items loosely suspended and seem to move off the screen. This gives an impression that they “exist” somewhere beyond the screen limit.
Parting Shot
This wraps up our top ten design trends for this year. We hope you have learned something new from the above patterns and web technologies.
Have fun designing. Note that, you don’t have to use something just because it’s trendy. Rather aim for design trends that improve user experience.
